So I was thinking.. I have a standard size chest freezer that I might bring out to the burn with me. It would be in my yurt so dust wouldn't be much of an issue. My generator runs at least 70% of the day anyway between swamp coolers during the day and lights and such at night. I have the Maxcold 165qt from Costco, and could just put that on top of it. Is this total overkill? I could have tons of ice frozen in gallon jugs plus frozen prepared meals in vacuum sealed bags. I will be on playa for 12 days, so it might be worth it...?

theCryptofishist wrote:Imagine the mess if it doesn't work and starts to melt.

Not saying it will happen, I'm sure I've read about people who did it. It just seems to me that having something so vital depend on electronics working on the playa is asking for trouble.

I can see the concern, but like I said, I would be bringing all of the ice frozen in gallon jugs. So worst case if it died I have way too much water. But since it will be in a yurt with little dust on the inside I don't see why it would be any less reliable than it is at home. I have a swamp cooler for the yurt as well so the inside temp stays in the mid-uppers 70s.

Ok.. FIGJAM doesn't think I am crazy.. I am trying to figure out how to explain to my partner that this makes it seem more realistic to me without sounding even more insane. "I swear, this guy really knows his shit!" :p

lemur wrote:we use two regular household fridge/freezers and one 6 foot deep freezer on the playa without issue in the camp im with..

they are old and still survive.. if shit breaks.. we would just have to figure it out.. and we would..

ours are powered 24/7

What are they stored in? My only other worry is the heat it my give off since it is in the yurt. But I could only run it at night if need be. It would basically be just another cooler, but one that has active cooling as a bonus when needed.

a friend brings a small size chest freezer, cheaply had from Sam's club, runs it on a Honda eu2K, not all day, but, it stays frozen the whole time....takes things out as needed to thaw in an ice chest, keeping drinks cold. Put it a little up off the ground on blocks, in the shade....I'd not be super concerned about putting it in a yurt. the cooling fins, if exposed, are easy enough to blow out with a small compressor, either there, or when you get home.......

ygmir wrote:a friend brings a small size chest freezer, cheaply had from Sam's club, runs it on a Honda eu2K, not all day, but, it stays frozen the whole time....takes things out as needed to thaw in an ice chest, keeping drinks cold. Put it a little up off the ground on blocks, in the shade....I'd not be super concerned about putting it in a yurt. the cooling fins, if exposed, are easy enough to blow out with a small compressor, either there, or when you get home.......

don't over think it!!

Great.. I am looking at the exact same setup. Chest freezer from Costco, and a Honda 2k eu2k. Going to run the freezer from about 9pm until 2 or 3am when I get back in to go to bed. Should relieve any heat issues. Thanks!

Many inexpensive "freezers" are designed to cool to like 31F. What we expect a freezer to do is more like 0F. Read the specs very carefully. How many hours can you be in transport with your frozen food without plugging it in? Dry ice?Plan to consume the contents in case of emergency thaw?The efficiency goes down due to altitude and ambient temperature - easier to transfer heat to the outside coils when it's 60-70F in the room than 90F.

Power wise, new freezers are efficient and a light load. I have dined a meal on one in the old Lance Camp - the original BM Power grid camp, of course they were on a redundant geni grid...

IMO, if you are going to do it, do something really epic with the contents and blogument the sh out of it!

Many inexpensive "freezers" are designed to cool to like 31F. What we expect a freezer to do is more like 0F. Read the specs very carefully. How many hours can you be in transport with your frozen food without plugging it in? Dry ice?Plan to consume the contents in case of emergency thaw?The efficiency goes down due to altitude and ambient temperature - easier to transfer heat to the outside coils when it's 60-70F in the room than 90F.

Power wise, new freezers are efficient and a light load. I have dined a meal on one in the old Lance Camp - the original BM Power grid camp, of course they were on a redundant geni grid...

IMO, if you are going to do it, do something really epic with the contents and blogument the sh out of it!

Agreed, I live in Denver so the altitude in BRC is actually lower.. I temped the freezer this afternoon and it was at -4, probably would have dropped another 5-7 degrees if I had let it keep going. I will throw 20 lbs of dry ice in for the 24 hour drive. Maybe do 40lbs so I don't have to run it nearly as much. I will start it out in the yurt, and can move it into a carport if needed for heating issues. I will also have a monkey hut off the front of the yurt I could put it in. Sweet! Yay for decadence!!

I have friends that bring in ice cream every year in a cooler with dry ice. They give away the ice cream when the dry ice runs out. In 2005, that was Thursday afternoon (with Monday arrival). 2006 was hotter, so I saw them Wednesday afternoon. So if you are stocking the freezer with dry ice, even without power everything should last three or 4 days.

So we did bring the freezer, and it worked great. I filled it with 24 frozen gallon jugs of water, and moved 2 or 3 into our main cooler every day to keep it cold (we were on playa 12 days.) The next day we had ice cold water for drinking and the swamp cooler. We ate like royalty all week with steaks, salmon, and all kinds of other things. I actually gained weight :p Another perk was having ice on hand, that stayed frozen, the entire time. I did not have a single drink while in camp that did not have ice. It was wonderful.

As for radiating heat, it did a bit so I ran it during the day for an hour or two then again at night for a few hours. Any more than that and it did start to get warm in there. The inside stayed perfectly frozen, however.

For the drive to BRC we put in 30lbs of dry ice and it was pretty much gone when we arrived. About 36 hours from unplugging at home to running in BRC.

We have been taking a cheap Costco freezer for several years and power it with a little Honda. A few points from my experience:

Put your stuff in the freezer a week ahead of time at home. Put the t-stat down to MAX COLD and let it run until you leave. Mine gets down to -5F in an 80F room. This assures everything is as cold as possible.

My freezer has the condenser coils built-in to the upper sidewalls and the evaporator coils in the floor and lower inside walls. So I put two layers of 1 inch RMax under the freezer for additional insulation, and another sheet on the top. Secure with foil tape. This really makes a difference, especially in a breeze or direct sun. Just getting it off the playa a bit helps too.

Hang a cheap digitherm on the outside so you can read the internal temp without opening the lid.

When you run your genny, try to get at least 3-4 hours uninterrupted a couple times a day. Short runs are not efficient.

For a freezer in a yurt, run it at night as long as possible. Cooler ambient temps make for a faster pump-down, and the extra heat will keep the yurt warmer.

Take some foil tape and foam sealant. One year I dropped the damned thing and bent the lid. Foil tape saved the day. By thursday I noticed a drip out the bottom. A seam popped, and the sealant fixed it quickly.

"To sum up my compassion level, I think we should feed the unwanted animals to the homeless. Or visa versa. Too much attention and money is spent on both."(A Beautiful Mind)

We bring several. One of which we use as a refrigerator with a special temperature monitor bout especially for that purpose.

Our camp serves root beer floats, so the freezers are almost a necessity, but it sure is nice to have them for food and other frozen goodies. You actually only have to run them during the day. They will keep their cold through the night. Actually most freezers will keep things frozen for 24 hours without power, but with all that ice cream we don't risk pushing them that far.

JKhttp://www.mudskippercafe.comWhen I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

We also brought a full sized chest freezer, left it in the Penske truck and just had to hooked up to the generator so whenever the generator was running it was on, probably about 12 hours a day. We also had blankets over it to help insulate it and everything stayed perfectly frozen the whole time, no issues whatsoever. I say bring it!

Thanks people, some great info here... My intentions for our camp is to obtain a 10cubic ft chest freezer and either a large ice box or old broken fridge we can lay on its back and remove the pump and other gear to leave a cheap good quality ice box. Freezing water in blocks or containers in the chest freezer and then putting them into the ice box to to keep other stuff cold whilst still the frozen stuff stays frozen and freezes more water etc.So, from what i gather just normal chest freezers will be Ok as long as its kept out of the sun and best if some extra insulation is taped to the external areas that are not for the evaporator (i think thats the hot side?)..... Now post replies here talk of generators... But i am thinking of running the freezer from an inverter with batteries and solar panels and at this stage have no idea what the power consumption in watts the freezers are likely to draw. The other thing is id really like some feedback about a set up of panels and batteries Vs generator pros and cons. Thanks people ... im doing the research for this for a new theme camp from mostly new burners from Australia.